Friedrich Engels was born on 28 November 1820 inBarmen,Jülich-Cleves-Berg,Prussia (nowWuppertal, Germany), as the eldest son ofFriedrich Engels Sr. [de] (1796–1860) and of Elisabeth "Elise" Franziska Mauritia van Haar (1797–1873).[6] The wealthy Engels family owned largecotton-textile mills in Barmen andSalford, England, both expanding industrial cities. Friedrich's parents were devoutCalvinists and raised their children accordingly—he was baptised in the Calvinist Reformed Evangelical Parish ofElberfeld.[7][8]
At the age of 13, Engels attended secondary school (Gymnasium) in the adjacent city of Elberfeld but had to leave at 17 due to pressure from his father, who wanted him to become a businessman and work as a mercantile apprentice in the family firm.[9] After a year in Barmen, the young Engels was, in 1838, sent by his father to undertake anapprenticeship at a trading house inBremen.[10][11] His parents expected that he would follow his father into a career in the family business. Their son's revolutionary activities disappointed them. It would be some years before he joined the family firm.[according to whom?]
While at Bremen, Engels began reading the philosophy ofGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose teachings dominated German philosophy at that time. In September 1838 he published his first work, a poem entitled "The Bedouin", in theBremisches Conversationsblatt No. 40. He also engaged in other literary work and began writing newspaper articles critiquing the societal ills ofindustrialisation.[12][13] He wrote under the pseudonym "Friedrich Oswald" to avoid connecting his family with his provocative writings.[according to whom?]
In 1841, Engels performed his military service in thePrussian Army as a member of the Household Artillery (German:Garde-Artillerie-Brigade). Assigned to Berlin, he attended university lectures at theUniversity of Berlin and began to associate with groups ofYoung Hegelians. He anonymously published articles in theRheinische Zeitung, exposing the poor employment and living conditions endured by factory workers.[11] The editor of theRheinische Zeitung was Karl Marx, but Engels would not meet Marx until late November 1842.[14] Engels acknowledged the influence of German philosophy on his intellectual development throughout his career.[10] In 1840, he also wrote: "To get the most out of life you must be active, you must live and you must have the courage to taste the thrill of being young."[15]
Engels developedatheistic beliefs and his relationship with his parents became strained.[16]
In 1842, his parents sent the 22-year-old Engels toSalford, England, a manufacturing centre where industrialisation was on the rise. He was to work inWeaste,Salford,[17] in the offices ofErmen and Engels's Victoria Mill, which made sewing threads.[18][19] Engels's father thought that working at the Salford firm might make his son reconsider some of his radical opinions.[10][19] On his way to Salford and Manchester, Engels visited the office of theRheinische Zeitung in Cologne and met Karl Marx for the first time. Initially, they were not impressed with each other.[20] Marx mistakenly thought that Engels was still associated with the Young Hegelians of Berlin, with whom Marx had just broken off ties.[21]
In Manchester, Engels metMary Burns, a fierce young Irish woman with radical opinions who worked in the Engels factory.[22][23] They began a relationship that lasted 20 years until her death in 1863.[24][25] The two never married, as both were against the institution of marriage. While Engels regarded stable monogamy as a virtue, he considered the current state and church-regulated marriage as a form of class oppression.[26][27] Burns guided Engels through Manchester andSalford, showing him the worst districts for his research.[according to whom?]
Engels observed the slums of Manchester in close detail, and took notes of its horrors, such aschild labour, the despoiled environment, and overworked and impoverished labourers.[29] He sent a trilogy of articles to Marx. These were published in theRheinische Zeitung and then in theDeutsch–Französische Jahrbücher, chronicling the conditions among the working class in Manchester. He later collected these articles for his influential first book,The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845).[30] Written between September 1844 and March 1845, the book was published in German in 1845. In the book, Engels described the "grim future of capitalism and the industrial age",[29] noting the details of the squalor in which the working people lived.[31] The book was published in English in 1887. Archival resources contemporary to Engels's stay in Manchester shed light on some of the conditions he describes, including a manuscript (MMM/10/1) held by special collections at the University of Manchester. This recounts cases seen in the Manchester Royal Infirmary, where industrial accidents dominated, and which resonate with Engels's comments on the disfigured persons seen walking around Manchester as a result of such accidents.[according to whom?]
An early photograph of Engels, thought to show him aged 20–25 (c. 1840–45)[7][34][35][36]
Engels returned to Germany in 1844. On the way, he stopped in Paris to meet Karl Marx, with whom he had an earlier correspondence. Marx had been living in Paris since late October 1843, after theRheinische Zeitung was banned in March 1843 by the Prussian government.[37] Prior to meeting Marx, Engels had become established as a fully developedmaterialist andscientific socialist, independent of Marx's philosophical development.[38]
In Paris, Marx andArnold Ruge were publishing theDeutsch–Französische Jahrbücher, of which only one issue appeared (in 1844), and in which Engels wroteOutlines of a Critique of Political Economy. Engels met Marx for a second time at theCafé de la Régence on the Place du Palais, on 28 August 1844. The two quickly became close friends and remained so their entire lives. Marx had read and was impressed by Engels's articles onThe Condition of the Working Class in England in which he had written that "[a] class which bears all the disadvantages of the social order without enjoying its advantages, [...] Who can demand that such a class respect this social order?"[39] Marx adopted Engels's idea that the working class would lead the revolution against thebourgeoisie as society advanced toward socialism, and incorporated this as part of his own philosophy.[40]
Engels stayed in Paris to help Marx writeThe Holy Family.[41] It was an attack on theYoung Hegelians and theBauer brothers and was published in late February 1845. Engels's earliest contribution to Marx's work was writing for theDeutsch–Französische Jahrbücher, edited by both Marx andArnold Ruge, in Paris in 1844. During this time in Paris, both Marx and Engels began their association with and then joined the secret revolutionary society called theLeague of the Just.[42] The League of the Just had been formed in 1837 in France to promote an egalitarian society through the overthrow of the existing governments. In 1839, the League participated in the 1839 rebellion fomented by the French utopian revolutionary socialist,Louis Auguste Blanqui; as Ruge remained a Young Hegelian in his belief, Marx and Ruge soon split and Ruge left theDeutsch–Französische Jahrbücher.[43] Following the split, Marx remained friendly enough with Ruge that he sent Ruge a warning on 15 January 1845 that the Paris police were going to execute orders against him, Marx and others at theDeutsch–Französische Jahrbücher requiring all to leave Paris within 24 hours.[44] Marx was expelled from Paris by French authorities on 3 February 1845 and settled in Brussels with his wife and one daughter.[45] Having left Paris on 6 September 1844, Engels returned to his home in Barmen to work on hisThe Condition of the Working Class in England, which was published in late May 1845.[45] Even before the publication of his book, Engels moved to Brussels in late April 1845, to collaborate with Marx on another book,German Ideology.[46] While living in Barmen, Engels began making contact with Socialists in theRhineland to raise money for Marx's publication efforts in Brussels; these contacts became more important as both Marx and Engels began political organising for theSocial Democratic Workers' Party of Germany.[47]
The nation of Belgium, founded in 1830, had one of the most liberal constitutions in Europe and functioned as a refuge for progressives from other countries. From 1845 to 1848, Engels and Marx lived inBrussels, spending much of their time organising the city's German workers. Shortly after their arrival, they contacted and joined the undergroundGerman Communist League. The Communist League was the successor organisation to the League of the Just which had been founded in 1837 but had recently disbanded.[49] Influenced byWilhelm Weitling, the Communist League was an international society of proletarian revolutionaries with branches in various European cities.[50]
The Communist League also had contacts with the underground conspiratorial organisation ofLouis Auguste Blanqui. Many of Marx's and Engels's current friends became members of the Communist League. Old friends likeGeorg Friedrich Herwegh, who had worked with Marx on theRheinsche Zeitung,Heinrich Heine, the famous poet, a young physician by the name ofRoland Daniels,Heinrich Bürgers andAugust Herman Ewerbeck, all maintained their contacts with Marx and Engels in Brussels.Georg Weerth, who had become a friend of Engels in England in 1843, now settled in Brussels.Carl Wallau andStephen Born (real name Simon Buttermilch) were both German immigrant typesetters who settled in Brussels to help Marx and Engels with their Communist League work. Marx and Engels made many new important contacts through the Communist League. One of the first wasWilhelm Wolff, who soon became one of Marx's and Engels's closest collaborators. Others wereJoseph Weydemeyer andFerdinand Freiligrath, a famous revolutionary poet. While most of the associates of Marx and Engels were German immigrants living in Brussels, some were Belgians. Phillipe Gigot, a Belgian philosopher and Victor Tedesco, a lawyer from Liège, both joined the Communist League.Joachim Lelewel, a prominent Polish historian and participant in the Polish uprising of 1830–1831, was also a frequent associate.[51][52]
The Communist League commissioned Marx and Engels to write a pamphlet explaining the principles of communism. This became theManifesto of the Communist Party, better known asThe Communist Manifesto.[53] It was first published on 21 February 1848 and ends with the lines: "Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"[10]
Engels's mother wrote in a letter to him of her concerns, commenting that he had "really gone too far" and "begged" him "to proceed no further".[54] She further stated:
You have paid more heed to other people, to strangers, and have taken no account of your mother's pleas. God alone knows what I have felt and suffered of late. I was trembling when I picked up the newspaper and saw therein that a warrant was out for my son's arrest.[54]
There was arevolution in France in 1848 thatsoon spread to other Western European countries. These events caused Engels and Marx to return toCologne in their homeland of Prussia. While living there, they created and served as editors for a new daily newspaper called theNeue Rheinische Zeitung.[18] Besides Marx and Engels, other frequent contributors to theNeue Rheinische Zeitung includedKarl Schapper,Wilhelm Wolff,Ernst Dronke,Peter Nothjung,Heinrich Bürgers,Ferdinand Wolff and Carl Cramer.[55] Engels's mother gave unwitting witness to the effect of theNeue Rheinische Zeitung on the revolutionary uprising in Cologne in 1848. Criticising his involvement in the uprising she states in a 5 December 1848 letter to Friedrich that "nobody, ourselves included, doubted that the meetings at which you and your friends spoke, and also the language of(Neue) Rh.Z. were largely the cause of these disturbances."[56]
Engels's parents hoped that young Engels would "decide to turn to activities other than those which you have been pursuing in recent years and which have caused so much distress".[56] At this point, his parents felt the only hope for their son was to emigrate to America and start his life over. They told him that he should do this or he would "cease to receive money from us"; however, the problem in the relationship between Engels and his parents was worked out without Engels having to leave England or being cut off from financial assistance from his parents.[56] In July 1851, Engels's father arrived to visit him in Manchester, England. During the visit, his father arranged for Engels to meet Peter Ermen of the office ofErmen & Engels, to move to Liverpool and to take over sole management of the office in Manchester.[57]
In 1849, Engels travelled to Bavaria for theBaden and Palatinate revolutionary uprising, an even more dangerous involvement. Starting with an article called "The Magyar Struggle", written on 8 January 1849, Engels, himself, began a series of reports on the Revolution and War for Independence of the newly founded Hungarian Republic.[58] Engels's articles on the Hungarian Republic became a regular feature in theNeue Rheinische Zeitung under the heading "From the Theatre of War"; however, the newspaper was suppressed during the June 1849 Prussian coup d'état. After the coup, Marx lost his Prussiancitizenship, was deported and fled to Paris, then London.[59] Engels stayed in Prussia and took part in an armed uprising in South Germany as anaide-de-camp in the volunteer corps ofAugust Willich.[60][61][62] Engels also took two cases of rifle cartridges with him when he went to join the uprising inElberfeld on 10 May 1849.[63] Later when Prussian troops came to Kaiserslautern to suppress an uprising there, Engels joined a group of volunteers under the command of August Willich, who were going to fight the Prussian troops.[64] When the uprising was crushed, Engels was one of the last members of Willich's volunteers to escape by crossing the Swiss border. Marx and others became concerned for Engels's life until they heard from him.[65]
Engels travelled through Switzerland as arefugee and eventually made it to safety in England.[10] On 6 June 1849 Prussian authorities issued an arrest warrant for him which contained a physical description as "height: 5 feet 6 inches; hair: blond; forehead: smooth; eyebrows: blond; eyes: blue; nose and mouth: well proportioned; beard: reddish; chin: oval; face: oval; complexion: healthy; figure: slender. Special characteristics: speaks very rapidly and is short-sighted".[66] As to his "short-sightedness", Engels admitted as much in a letter written to Joseph Weydemeyer on 19 June 1851 in which he says he was not worried about being selected for the Prussian military because of "my eye trouble, as I have now found out once and for all which renders me completely unfit for active service of any sort".[67] Once he was safe in Switzerland, Engels began to write down all his memories of the recent military campaign against the Prussians. This writing eventually became the article published as "The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution".[68]
To help Marx withNeue Rheinische Zeitung Politisch-ökonomische Revue, the new publishing effort in London, Engels sought ways to escape the continent and travel to London. On 5 October 1849, Engels arrived in the Italian port city of Genoa.[69] There, Engels booked passage on the English schooner,Cornish Diamond under the command of a Captain Stevens.[70] The voyage across the western Mediterranean, around the Iberian Peninsula by sailing schooner took about five weeks. Finally, theCornish Diamond sailed up the River Thames to London on 10 November 1849 with Engels on board.[71]
Upon his return to Britain, Engels re-entered the Manchester company in which his father held shares to support Marx financially as he worked onDas Kapital.[72][73] Unlike his first period in England (1843), Engels was now under police surveillance. He had "official" homes and "unofficial homes" all over Salford, Weaste and other inner-city Manchester districts where he lived with Mary Burns under false names to confuse the police.[31] Little more is known, as Engels destroyed over 1,500 letters between himself and Marx after the latter's death so as to conceal the details of their secretive lifestyle.[31]
Despite his work at the mill, Engels found time to write a book onMartin Luther, theProtestant Reformation and the1525 revolutionary war of the peasants, entitledThe Peasant War in Germany.[74] He also wrote a number of newspaper articles including "The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution" which he finished in February 1850[75] and "On the Slogan of the Abolition of the State and the German 'Friends of Anarchy'" written in October 1850.[76] In April 1851, he wrote the pamphlet "Conditions and Prospects of a War of the Holy Alliance against France".[77]
Marx and Engels denouncedLouis Bonaparte when he carried out a coup against the French government and made himself president for life on 2 December 1851. Engels wrote to Marx on 3 December 1851, characterising the coup as "comical"[78] and referred to it as occurring on "the 18th Brumaire", the date of Napoleon I's coup of 1799 according to theFrench Republican Calendar.[79] Marx later incorporated this comically ironic characterisation of the coup into his essay about it. He called the essayThe Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte using Engels's suggested characterisation.[80] Marx also borrowed Engels' characterisation of Hegel's notion of theWorld Spirit that history occurred twice, "once as a tragedy and secondly as a farce" in the first paragraph of his new essay.[81]
Meanwhile, Engels started working at the mill owned by his father in Manchester as an office clerk, the same position he held in his teens while in Germany where his father's company was based. Engels worked his way up to become a partner in the firm in 1864.[citation needed] Five years later, Engels retired from the business and could focus more on his studies.[18] At this time, Marx was living in London but they were able to exchange ideas through daily correspondence. One of the ideas that Engels and Marx contemplated was the possibility and character of a potential revolution in Russia. As early as April 1853, Engels and Marx anticipated an "aristocratic-bourgeois revolution in Russia which would begin in "St. Petersburg with a resulting civil war in the interior".[82] The model for this type of aristocratic-bourgeois revolution in Russia against the autocraticTsarist government in favour of a constitutional government had been provided by theDecembrist Revolt of 1825.[83]
Despite the unsuccessful revolt against the Tsarist government in favour of a constitutional government, both Engels and Marx anticipated a bourgeois revolution in Russia would occur, which would bring about a bourgeois stage in Russian development to precede a communist stage. By 1881, both Marx and Engels began to contemplate a course of development in Russia that would lead directly to the communist stage without the intervening bourgeois stage. This analysis was based on what Marx and Engels saw as the exceptional characteristics of the Russian village commune orobshchina.[84] While doubt was cast on this theory byGeorgi Plekhanov, Plekhanov's reasoning was based on the first edition ofDas Kapital (1867) which predated Marx's interest in Russian peasant communes by two years. Later editions of the text demonstrate Marx's sympathy for the argument ofNikolay Chernyshevsky, that it should be possible to establish socialism in Russia without an intermediary bourgeois stage provided that the peasant communes were used as the basis for the transition.[85]
In 1870, Engels moved to London where he and Marx lived until Marx's death in 1883.[10] Engels's London home from 1870 to 1894 was at 122Regent's Park Road.[86] In October 1894 he moved to 41 Regent's Park Road,Primrose Hill, NW1, where he died the following year.[citation needed]
Marx's first London residence was a cramped flat at 28Dean Street,Soho. From 1856, he lived at 9 Grafton Terrace,Kentish Town, and then in a tenement at 41 Maitland Park Road inBelsize Park from 1875 until his death in March 1883.[87]
Mary Burns died suddenly of heart disease in 1863, after which Engels became close with her younger sister Lydia ("Lizzie"). They lived openly as a couple in London and married on 11 September 1878, hours before Lizzie's death.[88][89]
Later in their lives, Marx and Engels explored the possibility that in some countries workers might be able toachieve their aims through peaceful means, but remained consistent in their view that force was necessary for the transition between systems of production, i.e. the transition from capitalism to socialism and ultimately communism.[90] Engels also wrote in his introduction to the 1891 edition of Marx'sThe Class Struggles in France that "rebellion in the old style, street fighting with barricades, which decided the issue everywhere up to 1848, was to a considerable extent obsolete",[91][92] although historians such as David W. Lowell empashised their cautionary and tactical meaning, arguing that "Engels questions only rebellion 'in the old style', that is, insurrection: he does not renounce revolution. The reason for Engels' caution is clear: he candidly admits that ultimate victory for any insurrection is rare, simply on military and tactical grounds".[93]
In his introduction to the 1895 edition of Marx'sThe Class Struggles in France, Engels outlines the role that reforms have in revolutionary work by acknowledging the tactical importance of certain reforms and short-term electoral politics (particularly in regards to agitation and propaganda):
The revolutionary workers of the Latin countries had been wont to regard the suffrage as a snare, as an instrument of government trickery. It was different in Germany. The Communist Manifesto had already proclaimed the winning of universal suffrage, of democracy, as one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat, and Lassalle had again taken up this point. Now that Bismarck found himself compelled to introduce this franchise as the only means of interesting the mass of the people in his plans, our workers immediately took it in earnest and sent August Bebel to the first, constituent Reichstag. And from that day on they have used the franchise in a way which has paid them a thousandfold and has served as a model to the workers of all countries. The franchise has been, in the words of the French Marxist programme, transformé de moyen de duperie qu'il a été jusquici en instrument d'emancipation — transformed by them from a means of deception, which it was before, into an instrument of emancipation. And if universal suffrage had offered no other advantage than that it allowed us to count our numbers every three years; that by the regularly established, unexpectedly rapid rise in our vote it increased in equal measure the workers’ certainty of victory and the dismay of their opponents, and so became our best means of propaganda; that it accurately informed us of our own strength and that of all opposing parties, and thereby provided us with a measure of proportion second to none for our actions, safeguarding us from untimely timidity as much as from untimely foolhardiness — if this had been the only advantage we gained from the suffrage, it would still have been much more than enough. But it did more than this by far. In election propaganda it provided us with a means, second to none, of getting in touch with the mass of the people where they still stand aloof from us; of forcing all parties to defend their views and actions against our attacks before all the people; and, further, it provided our representatives in the Reichstag with a platform from which they could speak to their opponents in parliament, and to the masses outside, with quite different authority and freedom than in the press or at meetings.
— Friedrich Engels, Introduction to Karl Marx’s The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850
Engels's statements in the French newspaperLe Figaro, in which he wrote that "revolution" and the "so-called socialist society" were not fixed concepts, but rather constantly changing social phenomena, and asserted that:[94]
Why, we have no final goal. We are evolutionaries, we have no intention of dictating definitive laws to mankind. Prejudices instead of detailed organisation of the society of the future? You will find no trace of that amongst us. We shall be satisfied when we have placed the means of production in the hands of the community, and we fully realise that this is quite impossible with the present monarchist and federalist government.
— Friedrich Engels, Le Figaro Interviews Engels
Engels also argued that it would be "suicidal" to talk about a revolutionary seizure of power at a time when the historical circumstances favoured a parliamentary road to power that he predicted could bring "social democracy into power as early as 1898". Engels's stance of openly accepting gradualist, evolutionary and parliamentary tactics while claiming that the historical circumstances did not favour a revolutionary seizure at that moment in time caused confusion.Marxist revisionistEduard Bernstein interpreted this as indicating that Engels was moving towards accepting parliamentary reformist and gradualist stances, but he ignored that Engels's stances were tactical as a response to the particular circumstances and that Engels was still committed torevolutionary socialism.[95] Engels was deeply distressed when he discovered that his introduction to a new edition ofThe Class Struggles in France had been edited by Bernstein andorthodox MarxistKarl Kautsky in a manner which left the impression that he had become a proponent of a peaceful road to socialism.[96] On 1 April 1895, four months before his death, Engels responded to Kautsky:
I was amazed to see today in theVorwärts an excerpt from my 'Introduction' that had been printed without my knowledge and tricked out in such a way as to present me as a peace-loving proponent of legality [at all costs]. Which is all the more reason why I should like it to appear in its entirety in theNeue Zeit in order that this disgraceful impression may be erased. I shall leave Liebknecht in no doubt as to what I think about it and the same applies to those who, irrespective of who they may be, gave him this opportunity of perverting my views and, what's more, without so much as a word to me about it.[97]
After Marx's death, Engels devoted much of his remaining years to editing Marx's unfinished volumes ofDas Kapital. He is credited with preventing the work from being lost due to Marx's "incredibly difficult handwriting".[98] He had to provide it with structure and develop its lines of thought, so that the second and third volumes ofCapital are effectively joint in authorship and its content (except for the extensive forewords added by Engels) cannot be attributed exclusively to either author.[99] Some scholars, notablyGeorges Labica [fr], thought that Engels had altered the course of Marx's analysis, but the shift in focus from the exploitation of labourers to the accumulation of capital, and the introduction of the possibility that capitalism could survive thetendency of the rate of profit to fall is argued by van Holthoon to be already Marx's, with the latter notion present in the long unpublishedGrundrisse.[99]
While the task of editingCapital forced Engels to abandon his unfinishedDialectics of Nature, he still completed two other works of his own in the years following Marx's death.[100] InThe Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), he made an argument usinganthropological evidence of the time to show that family structures changed over history and that the concept ofmonogamous marriage came from the necessity within class society for men to control women to ensure their own children would inherit their property. He argued a future communist society would allow people to make decisions about their relationships free of economic constraints.Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy was published in 1886. On 5 August 1895, Engels died of throat cancer in London, aged 74.[101][102] Following cremation atWoking Crematorium, his ashes were scattered offBeachy Head, nearEastbourne, as he had requested.[102][103] He left a considerable estate toEduard Bernstein and Louise Freyberger (wife ofLudwig Freyberger), valued for probate at £25,265 0s. 11d, equivalent to £3,686,193 in 2023.[104][105]
Engels's interests included poetry,fox hunting and hosting regular Sunday parties for London's left-wingintelligentsia where, as one regular put it, "no one left before two or three in the morning". His stated personal motto was "take it easy" while "jollity" was listed as his favourite virtue.[107]
Of Engels's personality and appearance,Robert Heilbroner described him inThe Worldly Philosophers as "tall and rather elegant, he had the figure of a man who liked to fence and to ride to hounds and who had once swum theWeser River four times without a break" as well as having been "gifted with a quick wit and facile mind" and of a gay temperament, being able to "stutter in twenty languages". He had a great enjoyment of wine and other "bourgeois pleasures". Engels favoured forming romantic relationships with women of the proletariat and found a long-term partner in a working-class woman namedMary Burns, although they never married. After her death, Engels was romantically involved with her younger sisterLydia Burns.[108]
Engels was apolyglot and was able to write and speak in numerous languages, including Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Irish, Spanish, Polish, French, English, German and theMilanese dialect.[109]
In his biography of Engels,Vladimir Lenin wrote: "After his friend Karl Marx (who died in 1883), Engels was the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole civilised world. [...] In their scientific works, Marx and Engels were the first to explain that socialism is not the invention of dreamers, but the final aim and necessary result of the development of the productive forces in modern society. All recorded history hitherto has been a history of class struggle, of the succession of the rule and victory of certain social classes over others."[110] According toPaul Kellogg, there is "some considerable controversy" regarding "the place of Frederick Engels in the canon of 'classical Marxism'". While some such asTerrell Carver dispute "Engels' claim that Marx agreed with the views put forward in Engels' major theoretical work,Anti-Dühring", others such asE. P. Thompson "identified a tendency to make 'old Engels into a whipping boy, and to impugn him any sign that once chooses to impugn subsequent Marxisms'".[91]
Paul Thomas, of theUniversity of California, Berkeley, claims that while Engels had been the most important and dedicated facilitator and diffuser of Marx's writings, he significantly altered Marx's intents as he held, edited and released them in a finished form and commentated on them. Engels attempted to fill gaps in Marx's system and extend it to other fields. In particular, Engels is said to have stressedhistorical materialism, assigning it a character of scientific discovery and a doctrine, formingMarxism as such. A case in point isAnti-Dühring which both supporters and detractors of socialism treated as an encompassing presentation of Marx's thought. While in his extensive correspondence with German socialists, Engels modestly presented his own secondary place in the couple's intellectual relationship and always emphasised Marx's outstanding role, Russian communists such as Lenin raised Engels up with Marx and conflated their thoughts. Soviet Marxists then developed this tendency to the state doctrine ofdialectical materialism.[111]
A 19851 rouble coin from the Soviet Union commemorating the 165th anniversary of Engels' birth
According to Norman Levine, in spite of his criticism of theutopian socialists, Engels's beliefs were influenced by the French socialistCharles Fourier. From Fourier, he derives four main points that characterise the social conditions of a communist state. The first point maintains that every individual would be able to fully develop their talents by eliminating the specialisation of production. Without specialisation, every individual would be permitted to exercise any vocation of their choosing for as long or as little as they would like. If talents permitted it, one could be a baker for a year and an engineer the next. The second point builds upon the first, as with the ability of workers to cycle through different jobs of their choosing, the fundamental basis of the social division of labour is destroyed and the social division of labour will disappear as a result. If anyone can be employed at any job that they wish, then there are clearly no longer any divisions or barriers to entry for labour, otherwise, such fluidity between entirely different jobs would not exist. The third point continues from the second as once the social division of labour is gone, the division of social classes based on property ownership will fade with it. If the labour division puts a man in charge of a farm, that farmer owns the productive resources of that farm. The same applies to the ownership of a factory or a bank. Without labour division, no single social class may claim exclusive rights to a particular means of production since the absence of labour division allows all to use it. Finally, the fourth point concludes that the elimination of social classes destroys the sole purpose of the state and it will cease to exist. As Engels stated in his own writing, the only purpose of the state is to abate the effects of class antagonisms. With the elimination of social classes based on property, the state becomes obsolete and a communist society, at least in the eyes of Engels, is achieved.[118]
This book was written by Marx and Engels in November 1844. It is a critique of theYoung Hegelians and their trend of thought which was very popular in academic circles at the time. The title was suggested by the publisher and is meant as a sarcastic reference to theBauer Brothers and their supporters.[119]
The book created a controversy with much of thepress and causedBruno Bauer to attempt to refute the book in an article published inWigand's [de]Vierteljahrsschrift in 1845. Bauer claimed that Marx and Engels misunderstood what he was trying to say. Marx later replied to his response with his own article published in the journalGesellschaftsspiegel [de] in January 1846. Marx also discussed the argument in chapter 2 ofThe German Ideology.[119]
The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845)
A study of the deprived conditions of the working class in Manchester and Salford, based on Engels's personal observations. The work also contains seminal thoughts on the state of socialism and its development. Originally published in German and only translated into English in 1887, the work initially had little impact in England; however, it was very influential with historians of British industrialisation throughout the twentieth century.[120]
An account of the early 16th-century uprising known as theGerman Peasants' War, with a comparison with the recent revolutionary uprisings of 1848–1849 across Europe.[121]
Popularly known asAnti-Dühring, this book is a detailed critique of the philosophical positions ofEugen Dühring, a German philosopher and critic of Marxism. In the course of replying to Dühring, Engels reviews recent advances in science and mathematics seeking to demonstrate the way in which the concepts of dialectics apply to natural phenomena. Many of these ideas were later developed in the unfinished work,Dialectics of Nature. Three chapters ofAnti-Dühring were later edited and published under the separate title,Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.[citation needed]
In this work, one of the best-selling socialist books of the era,[122] Engels briefly described and analyzed the ideas of notable utopian socialists such asCharles Fourier andRobert Owen. Engels pointed out their strong points and shortcomings, and provided an explanation of the scientific socialist framework for the understanding of capitalism, and an outline of the progression of social and economic development from the perspective ofhistorical materialism.[citation needed]
Dialectics of Nature (German: "Dialektik der Natur") is an unfinished 1883 work by Engels that applies Marxist ideas, particularly those of dialectical materialism, to science. It was first published in the Soviet Union in 1925.[123]
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)
In this work, Engels argues that the family is an ever-changing institution that has been shaped by capitalism. It contains a historical view of the family in relation to issues of class, female subjugation andprivate property.
Tristram Hunt describes Engels as a pioneering feminist and as "the intellectual architect of socialist feminism", and according to him, "Engels' relevance rests on...The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State." Engels wrote that in primeval societies women were treated with a high degree of respect and took major social roles, but this changed drastically with the development of private property and monogamic family; in times contemporary to Engels, monogamic family was underpinned by capitalism, what asserted the suppression of women's rights.[124][125]
^abNorman Levine,Divergent Paths: The Hegelian Foundations of Marx's Method, Lexington Books, 2006, p. 92: "the Young never graduated from the gymnasium, never went to university..."
^A copy of Friedrich Engels's birth certificate appears on page 577 of theCollected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 2 (New York: International Publishers, 1975).
^A copy of Friedrich Engels's baptism certificate appears on page 580 of theCollected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 2 (New York: International Publishers, 1975).
^The Condition of the Working Class in England, in theCollected Works of Marx and Engels: Volume 4 (International Publishers: New York, 1975) pp. 295–596.
^Thomson, Emma (2012).Flanders : Northern Belgium : the Bradt travel guide. Chalfont St. Peter: Bradt Travel Guides. p. 92.ISBN978-1-84162-377-1.OCLC810098009.
^Isaiah Berlin,Karl Marx: His Life and Environment (Oxford University Press: Oxford, England, 1963) pp. 159–160.
^Isaiah Berlin,Karl Marx: His Life and Environment p. 160.
^Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,Manifesto of the Communist Party contained in theCollected Works Volume 6 pp. 477–517.
^abElisabeth Engels's letter contained at No. 6 of the Appendix,Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 38 (International Publishers: New York, 1982) pp. 540–541.
^Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "Banquet in Gürzenich" contained in theCollected Works: Volume 9 (International Publishers: New York, 1977) p. 490.
^abcElisabeth Engels's letter to Friedrich Engels contained at No. 8 of the Appendix in theCollected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 38, p. 543.
^Friedrich Engels letter to Karl Marx dated 6 July 1851 and contained at No. 186 of theCollected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 38, p. 378.
^Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "The Magyar Struggle" contained inCollected Works: Volume 8, pp. 227–238.
^See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,Collected Works: Volume 8, pp. 451–480 andVolume 9, pp. 9–463.
^"The Peasant War in Germany" and s contained in theCollected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 10 pp. 397–482.
^The article called "The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution" is contained in theCollected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 10 p. 147
^The article "On the Slogan of the Abolition of the State and the German 'Friends of Anarchy'" is contained in theCollected Works of Marx and Engels: Volume 10 p. 486.
^The pamphlet "Conditions and Prospects of a War of the Holy Alliance against France" is contained in theCollected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 10 p. 542.
^Friedrich Engels's letter to Karl Marx dated 3 December 1851 contained in the "Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 38", p. 503.
^See note 517 located at p. 635 in the "Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 38.
^Karl Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" contained in theCollected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 11, p. 98.
^Karl Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" contained in theCollected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 11, p. 103.
^Letter from Engels to Joseph Weydemeyer dated 12 April 1853, contained in theCollected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 39 (New York: International Publishers, 1983) pp. 305–306.
^W. Bruce Lincoln,The Romanovs: Autocrats of All the Russias (New York: Dial Press, 1981) pp. 408–413.
^See the letter from Karl Marx to Vera Zasulich contained in theCollected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 46, (New York: International Press, 1992), pp. 71–72, and Engels's "Preface to the Russian Edition of 1882" inThe Communist Manifesto.
^Gareth Stedman Jones, note on Engels's "Preface to the Russian Edition of 1882" inThe Communist Manifesto (London: Penguin Books, 2002).
^Gray, Daniel; Johnson, Elliott; Walker, David (2014).Historical Dictionary of Marxism. Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements (2nd ed.). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 119–120.ISBN9781442237988.
^abKellogg, Paul (Summer 1991). "Engels and the Roots of 'Revisionism': A Re-Evaluation".Science & Society. Guilford Press.55 (2): 158–174.JSTOR40403133.
^Daniels, Robert Vincent (1969) [1960].The Conscience of the Revolution, Communist Opposition in Russia. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 7.ISBN9780671203870.
^Lowell, David W. (1984).From Marx to Lenin: An Evaluation of Marx's Responsibility for Soviet Authoritarianism (reprinted ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 83.ISBN9780521261883.
^"Engels, Frederick".probatesearchservice.gov. UK Government. 1895. Retrieved14 June 2020.
^Manchester Photographers by Gillian Read. Ed. Royal Photographic Society's Historical Group, 1982: "George Lester, 51, King Street, Manchester (1863–1868). See the photo in Jenny Marx album too.
^Paul Lafargue; Jacques Bonhomme (15 August 1905)."Friedrich Engels".Marxists Internet Archive (from The Social Democrat journal). Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved15 April 2013.
^Vladimir Ilyich Lenin."Friedrich Engels". Marxists.org. Retrieved25 January 2011.
^Thomas, Paul (1991), "Critical Reception: Marx then and now", inCarver, Terrell (ed.),The Cambridge Companion to Marx, Cambridge University Press, pp. 36–42
^The Peasant War in Germany, trans. Moissaye J. Olgin (New York: International Publishers, 1966).
^Engels, Friedrich (1970) [1892]."Introduction".Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Marx/Engels Selected Works. Vol. 3.Progress Publishers.From this French text, a Polish and a Spanish edition were prepared. In 1883, our German friends brought out the pamphlet in the original language. Italian, Russian, Danish, Dutch, and Roumanian translations, based upon the German text, have since been published. Thus, the present English edition, this little book circulates in 10 languages. I am not aware that any other Socialist work, not even our Communist Manifesto of 1848, or Marx's Capital, has been so often translated. In Germany, it has had four editions of about 20,000 copies in all. Cited inCarver, Terrell (2003).Engels: A Very Short Introduction.Oxford University Press. p. 56.ISBN978-0-19-280466-2. andThomas, Paul (1991), "Critical Reception: Marx then and now", in Carver, Terrell (ed.),The Cambridge Companion to Marx,Cambridge University Press
Hunt, Tristram (2009).The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels. London: Allen Lane.ISBN978-0713998528.
Schmidtgall, Harry (1981),Friedrich Engels' Manchester-Aufenthalt 1842–1844. Soziale Bewegungen und politische Diskussionen. Mit Auszügen aus Jakob Venedeys England-Buch (1845) und unbekannten Engels-Dokumenten, Schriften aus dem Karl-Marx-Haus, 25, Trier:Karl-Marx-Haus
van Holthoon, Frits (2022), "Friedrich Engels and the Revolution", in Backhaus, Jürgen Georg; Chaloupek, Günther; Frambach, Hans A. (eds.),200 Years of Friedrich Engels: A Critical Assessment of His Life and Scholarship, The European Heritage in Economics and the Social Sciences, vol. 25, Cham: Springer, pp. 91–105,doi:10.1007/978-3-031-10115-1_7,ISBN978-3-031-10114-4
Whitfield, Roy (1988),Friedrich Engels in Manchester: the Search for a Shadow, Manchester: Working Class Movement Library,ISBN0906932211
Kangal, Kaan (2020),Friedrich Engels and the Dialectics of Nature, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan
Kuroda, Kan'ichi (2000),Engels' Political Economy: On the Difference in Philosophy between Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Tokyo: Akane Books,ISBN4899890494
Liedman, Sven-Eric (2022),The Game of Contradictions: The Philosophy of Friedrich Engels and Nineteenth Century Science, Boston: Brill
Rigby, Stephen Henry (1992),Engels and the Formation of Marxism: History, Dialectics and Revolution, Manchester: Manchester University Press,ISBN0719035309
Rose, Margaret A. (1978),Reading the Young Marx and Engels: Poetry, Parody, and the Censor, London:Croom Helm,ISBN0856647926
A biographical Germangraphic novel calledEngels – Unternehmer und Revolutionär ("Engels – Businessman and Revolutionary") was published in 2020.ISBN3948755493
Friedrich Engels,"On Rifled Cannon", articles from the New YorkTribune, April, May and June 1860, reprinted inMilitary Affairs 21, no. 4 (Winter 1957) ed. Morton Borden, 193–198.
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